Ninth cruise ship cancellation blow to businesses

Ovation of the Seas slips between Taiaroa Head and the Port Otago dredge New Era as it entered Otago Harbour in December 2017. Photo: Gerard O'Brien
Ovation of the Seas slips between Taiaroa Head and the Port Otago dredge New Era as it entered Otago Harbour in December 2017. Photo: Gerard O'Brien
The weather has put paid to nine cruise ship visits at Dunedin already this year, delivering a blow to the city’s tourist and retail companies.

Today’s visit by giant Ovation of the Seas, which brings with it up to 5000 passengers and a further 1500 crew, was cancelled for the fourth time, this time because of weather.

Two of its previous visits were cancelled because of weather and one because of the White Island disaster.

Dunedin Enterprise i-SITE manager Louise van de Vlierd said the latest cancellation made this year’s one of the worst cruise ship seasons in a long time.

The weather was something that could not be controlled, but the decision to cancel a visit was never taken lightly.

‘‘It was taken into account ... the decision meant disappointing about 4000 cruise ship passengers each time.’’

Foot traffic from about 23,000 passengers had been lost as a result of the nine cancellations, she said.

Port Chalmers retailer Gillian Elliot, of The Flying Whale, said she had been in business for about three cruise ship seasons and had not noticed the cancellations the way she had this season.

Normally, with Ovation of the Seas, she would expect about 200 visitors from the ship to her store, and about half of them would buy something.

‘‘Missing the Ovation passengers definitely makes a difference.

‘‘I notice it.’’

Port Otago chief executive Kevin Winders said strong winds were mainly to blame for cancellations.

‘‘This year we have had some quite strong winds and ... for safety [reasons] you can not bring them in ... the Dunedin community has missed out on those visits.’’

Otago Chamber of Commerce chief executive Dougal McGowan said the decrease in foot traffic would affect retailers and hospitality businesses, particularly those in Port Chalmers.

‘‘It is a significant income stream for them.

‘‘There is a big flow-on effect every time one of these ships are cancelled.’’

Finding a solution would be a challenge, as not much could be done about bad weather.

But Mr McGowan said Port Otago had done as much as it could, which included deepening the channel to create more room for ships to manoeuvre.

‘‘They are very large craft and when the wind catches them it means they become like a sail and the last thing we want to have is an incident with one of the boats.’’

He said he would much rather ships were cautious, but it would mean businesses would need to be flexible and inform their employees quickly about what was going on.

Ovation of the Seas was redirected to Wellington.

molly.houseman@odt.co.nz

Comments

It's the DCC's fault - somehow.

by creating a nightmarish experience in the Octagon, I presume

 

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